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Gelsemium sempervirens
Also called False jessamine, Yellow jessamine, Carolina Jasmine, Evening Trumpet Flower, Gelsemium, Woodbine, Carolina Jessamine
A twining evergreen vine native to the southeastern US, Mexico and Central America, grown for its fragrant yellow trumpet flowers in spring. It is not a true jasmine. Give it a sheltered spot in full sun or light shade and support it on an arbor, fence or wall.
Gelsemium sempervirens is a twining vine in the family Gelsemiaceae, native to subtropical and tropical America: Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico (Chiapas, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Puebla, Hidalgo), and southeastern and south-central United States (from Texas to Virginia). It has a number of common names including yellow jessamine or confederate jessamine or jasmine, Carolina jasmine or jessamine, evening trumpetflower, gelsemium and woodbine.
Yellow jessamine is the state flower of South Carolina.
Despite the hazards, this is a popular garden plant in warmer areas, frequently being trained to grow over arbors or to cover walls. In the UK, it has won the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit. It can be grown outdoors in mild and coastal areas of the UK (to a lower limit of −5 °C (23 °F)), but elsewhere must be grown under glass. It requires a sheltered position in full sun or light shade.
All parts of this plant contain the toxic strychnine-related alkaloids gelsemine and gelseminine and should not be consumed. The sap may cause skin irritation in sensitive individuals. Children, mistaking this flower for honeysuckle, have been poisoned by sucking the nectar from the flower. The nectar is also toxic to honeybees, which may cause brood death when gathered by the bees. The nectar may, however, be beneficial to bumblebees. It has been shown that bumblebees fed on gelsemine have a reduced load of Crithidia bombi in their fecal matter after 7 days, although this difference was not significant after 10 days. Reduced parasite load increases foraging efficiency, and pollinators may selectively collect otherwise toxic secondary metabolites as a means of self-medication.
The plant can be lethal to livestock.
Gelsemium sempervirens is insect pollinated and is recorded to have been visited in northern Florida by Bombus impatiens, Ceratina, Habropoda laboriosa, Lasioglossum reticulatum, Osmia sandhouseae, and Xylocopa virginica.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Gelsemium sempervirens by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
